Love Alone

One of the key points the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes about prayer is that it involves a mutual relationship between God and the person praying. "Prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him," the Catechism states (no. 2560). Moreover, God is the initiator of the relationship: "In prayer, the faithful God's initiative of love always comes first (no. 2567). The human act of praying is a response to God's initiative. Perhaps this is not our experience. The move from saying prayers to meditating or praying from the heart can be difficult. Even the most loquacious person can be at a loss for words. I may not have a lot to say to God. Even more so does it seem that God has little to say to me. I wait in silence for God to speak and I hear nothing. God doesn't seem to be holding up his end of the deal. However, as I progress further in prayer, I realize God does speak. Usually not in words and often not at

We live in a time of computers, of the virtual, of the immediate. News travels from one side of the world to the other in a fraction of a second. We have immediate access to a mountain of information. All of this undoubtedly has a positive value, as the Church has pointed out on numerous occasions. However, we do also run the risk of falling into the worrying superficiality of data with no criteria for analysis; information without formation, a light, post-modern culture which exalts the empty, the passing, the insignificant. Perhaps what this society needs, more than ever, is something that the Carmelite charism can offer: the meaning of contemplation, of spiritual depth. The Carmelite should be a man or woman with inner life, with depth, with spiritual riches, a man or woman who in the midst of the hustle and bustle of daily life, of the problems and contradictions of our time is able to create the inner silence in which God may speak. Sometimes we too are swept up in prejudice, hurr